Introduction to events

Events in JavaScript are usually something where you write a snippet of code or a name of a function within one of the event attributes on an HTML tag. For instance, you can create an event for a link by writing code like this:

<a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="alert('Hello, world!');">Test</a>

And of course this is still perfectly valid when using jQuery. However, using jQuery, you can bind code to the event of an element even easier, especially in cases where you want to attach anonymous functions or use the same code for multiple events, or even the same code for multiple events of multiple elements. As an example, you could bind the same event to all links and span tags in your document, with only a few lines of code like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function()
{
	$("a, span").bind("click", function() {
		alert('Hello, world!');
	});
});
</script>

We use the bind method, which is essential when working with events and jQuery. In the following chapters we will tell you more about how it works, along with other event related information you need.